Yoga Types

Limbs of Yoga

Purna Yoga

In the teachings of the Twentieth century Bengali philosopher-sage Sri Aurobindo, Purna Yoga (or Integral yoga, Sanskrit for full or complete yoga, sometimes also called supramental yoga) refers to the process of the union of all the parts of one's being with the Divine, and the transmutation of all of their jarring elements into a harmonious state of higher divine consciousness and existence.

Sri Aurobindo initiated and defined integral yoga in the early 1900's as "a path of integral seeking of the Divine by which all that we are is in the end liberated out of the Ignorance and its undivine formations into a truth beyond the Mind, a truth not only of highest spiritual status but of a dynamic spiritual self-manifestation in the universe."

He describes the nature and practice of integral yoga in his opus The Synthesis of Yoga. As the title of that work indicates, his integral yoga is a yoga of synthesis, intended to harmonize the paths of karma, jnana, and bhakti yoga as described in the Bhagavad Gita. It can also be considered a synthesis between Vedanta and Tantra, and even between Eastern and Western approaches to spirituality.